Straddle May Financials

My first straddle with the QQQQ's worked well, so I decided to push forward with another straddle on the Financial Select Sector SPDR (XLF). I picked the May $8.00 strike price, which should give me more time for the market to decide which direction it would actually like to follow, thus a large up/down swing. It's also trading on lighter volume and right near its 50-day moving average.

India ETF

Just wanted to bring to peoples attention to a new ETF specifically focused on India. The ETF was created on 22 Feb 2008 and is a Large Cap Growth ETF (ticker EPI), which is run by Wisdom Tree. They have about $162M invested and their top 3 sectors according to Yahoo.com are: Industrials 32.45%, Financial 14.54%, and Energy 12.49%. I have included their site if you are interested in reading up more on this ETF. For disclosure, I am not invested in this ETF at this time. HAGO Justin!

http://www.wisdomtree.com/bannerads/india/PPC/ad1a.html?source=Google&gclid=CNqCkO692pICFRGYggodITzc-w

Stock Trades

Well today was a day I could sit and play with my son and do a few trades. I found a really cool website a few weeks ago, which mixes trading with humor, so check it out http://suckmynasdaq.com/. Anyhow I was trading today and picked up some shares of Akamai Technologies INC (AKAM) http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=akam&p=D&b=5&g=0&id=0. Got in at $32.81 and cashed out approximately 1 hour later up over 1 point.



In addition, I also picked up some shares of Amtrust Financial Services Inc (AFSI) http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?c=afsi at $17.25 and $17.27 and it went down a bit today, but will continue to watch. A few other notables that I continue to watch are POT, NVDA, and BOOM. Not sure how the market is going to fair in the next couple of days but time will tell. If anyone out there finds this stuff interesting, useful, or just happened to come across it please leave a response or link to other places. Tks, Justin

The Trend is Your Friend

Today my daughter is not feeling too well, so we have decided to keep her home today. With that, last night I was able to scour the financial marketplace for some stocks that I wanted to get long in. One stock that has continued to intrigue me for many weeks has been Potash Corp of Saskatchewan INC. (POT). This company is a Canadian play on the fertilizer market and has been up tremendoulsy YTD and has wild swings, which has made me hesitant to pull the trigger on a trade. It's not uncommon for this stock to gap up and/or down 4-5 pts. In May 2007, there was a 3:1 stock split and now the price is hovering in the 70's. I finally decided to go for it and put a limit order this morning for $75.00. Just so there is no confusion, I personally believe this stock is good for a quick pop if I can get in at this low price and will look to sell in the 80's. I'll cross my fingers and see if this trade works. As I am posting this the stock is trading at $77.70 after reaching a high of $78.80 and sporting a low of $76.41.